“Ah!  Fitzgerald,” he said, “have you left the attractions of Collins Street for the still greater ones of Clubland?”

“Not I,” answered Brian.  “I’ve come to carry you off to afternoon tea with Madge and myself.”

“I don’t mind,” answered Mr. Frettlby rising; “but, isn’t afternoon tea at half-past one rather an anomaly?”

“What’s in a name?” said Fitzgerald, absently, as they left the room.  “What have you been doing all morning?”

“I’ve been in here for the last half-hour reading,” answered the other, carelessly.

“Wool market, I suppose?”

“No, the hansom cab murder.”

“Oh, d—­that thing!” said Brian, hastily; then, seeing his companion looking at him in surprise, he apologised.  “But, indeed,” he went on, “I’m nearly worried to death by people asking about Whyte, as if I knew all about him, whereas I know nothing.”

“Just as well you don’t,” answered Mr. Frettlby, as they descended the steps together; “he was not a very desirable companion.”

It was on the tip of Brian’s tongue to say, “And yet you wanted him to marry your daughter,” but he wisely refrained, and they reached the carriage in silence.

“Now then, papa,” said Madge, when they were all settled in the carriage, and it was rolling along smoothly in the direction of East Melbourne, “what have you been doing?”

“Enjoying myself,” answered her father, “until you and Brian came, and dragged me out into this blazing sunshine.”

“Well, Brian has been so good of late,” said Madge, “that I had to reward him, so I knew that nothing would please him better than to play host.”

“Certainly,” said Brian, rousing himself out of a fit of abstraction, “especially when one has such charming visitors.”

Madge laughed at this, and made a little grimace.

“If your tea is only equal to your compliments,” she said lightly, “I’m sure papa will forgive us for dragging him away from his club.”

“Papa will forgive anything,” murmured Mr. Frettlby, tilting his hat over his eyes, “so long as he gets somewhere out of the sun.  I can’t say I care about playing the parts of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace of a Melbourne hot day.”

“There now, papa is quite a host in himself,” said Madge mischievously, as, the carriage drew up at Mrs. Sampson’s door.

“No, you are wrong,” said Brian, as he alighted and helped her out; “I am the host in myself this time.”

“If there is one thing I hate above another,” observed Miss Frettlby, calmly, “it’s a pun, and especially a bad one.”

Mrs. Sampson was very much astonished at the early arrival of her lodger’s guests, and did not hesitate to express her astonishment.

“Bein’ taken by surprise,” she said, with an apologetic cackle, “it ain’t to be suppose as miraculs can be performed with regard to cookin’, the fire havin’ gone out, not bein’ kept alight on account of the ’eat of the day, which was that ‘ot as never was, tho’, to be sure, bein’ a child in the early days, I remember it were that ’ot as my sister’s aunt was in the ‘abit of roastin’ her jints in the sun.”